de Halve Maen, Vol. 92, No. 3 by The Holland Society of New York

de Halve Maen

Journal of The Holland Society of New York Vol. 92, No. 3 2019

Congratulations to Joyce D. Goodfriend, winner of the Hendricks Book Award given by the New Netherlands Institute

EVERY BOOK AT NNI IS $18.69 Avery. Treasures from Olana Bonomi. A Factious People Chambers. Memories of War Colden. The History of the Five Indian Nations Crouch. Nobility Lost Dixon. The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden Falk. Barns of New York Fels. Fire and Ice Fisher/Silverman. Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts Goodfriend. Who Should Rule at Home? Goodier/Pastorello. Women Will Vote Herrmann. No Useless Mouth Hoffer/Hoffer. The Clamor of Lawyers Jacobs. The Colony of New Netherland Klein. The Empire State Klooster. The Dutch Moment Klooster/Oostindie. Realm between Empires McCurdy. Quarters Midtrød. The Memory of All Ancient Customs Miller. Dangerous Guests Moyer. The Public Universal Friend Newell. Brethren by Nature Noorlander. Heaven’s Wrath Norton. Separated by Their Sex O’Donnell. Elizabeth Seton Otterness. Becoming German Peck. Thomas Cole’s Refrain Pichichero. The Military Enlightenment Rink. Holland on the Hudson Schlett. A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden Schuyler. Embattled River Schuyler. Sanctified Landscape Silverman. Red Brethren Stradling. The Nature of New York Trebilcock/Balint. Glories of the Hudson Wonderley. Oneida Utopia

CORNELLPRESS.CORNELL.EDU

Also winner of the Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize of the New York State Historical Association and a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title

Congratulations to D. L. Noorlander on the publication of Heaven’s Wrath. His book is the first installment of the cooperative publishing agreement between the New Netherland Institute and Cornell University Press.

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The Holland Society of New York 1345 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10105 President Andrew S. Terhune Vice President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Treasurer R. Dean Vanderwarker III

Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America VOL. XCII Secretary James J. Middaugh Domine Rev. Paul D. Lent

Advisory Council of Past Presidents Kenneth L. Demarest Jr. W. Wells Van Pelt Jr. Robert Schenck Walton Van Winkle III Peter Van Dyke William Van Winkle Charles Zabriskie Jr. Trustees Laurie Bogart Bradley D. Cole D. David Conklin Christopher M. Cortright Eric E. DeLamarter David W. Ditmars Philips Correll Durling Trustees Emeriti Adrian T. Bogart John O. Delamater Robert Gardiner Goelet David M. Riker Kent L. Stratt

Andrew A. Hendricks Sarah E. Lefferts David D. Nostrand Gregory M. Outwater Richard Van Deusen Kenneth G. Winans Stuart W. Van Winkle David William Voorhees Ferdinand L. Wyckoff Jr. Stephen S. Wyckoff Donald Westervelt Rev. Everett Zabriskie

Burgher Guard Captain Sarah Bogart Vice-Presidents Connecticut-Westchester R. Dean Vanderwarker III Dutchess and Ulster County D. David Conklin Florida James S. Lansing International Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr. (Ret) Jersey Shore Stuart W. Van Winkle Long Island Eric E. DeLamarter Mid-West David Ditmars New Amsterdam Eric E. DeLamarter New England Niagara David S. Quackenbush Old Bergen-Central New Jersey Gregory M. Outwater Old South Pacific Northwest Edwin Outwater III Pacific Southwest (North) Kenneth G. Winans Pacific Southwest (South) Paul H. Davis Patroons Robert E. Van Vranken Potomac Christopher M. Cortright Rocky Mountain Adrian T. Bogart IV South River Walton Van Winkle III Texas James J. Middaugh Virginia and the Carolinas James R. Van Blarcom United States Air Force United States Army Col. Adrian T. Bogart III United States Coast Guard Capt. Louis K. Bragaw Jr. (Ret) United States Marines Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr., USMC (Ret) United States Navy LCDR James N. Vandenberg, CEC, USN Editor David William Voorhees Production Manager Sarah Bogart Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright John Lansing

Copy Editor Rudy VanVeghten

David M. Riker Rudy VanVeghten

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NUMBER 3

IN THIS ISSUE: 54

Editor’s Corner

The Holland Society A Century Ago: Speeches from the Thirty-Fourth Annual Banquet, January 16, 1919

Address by Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond

Address by Dr. Franklin Henry Giddings

Address by Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman

Here and There in New Netherland Studies

Society Activities

In Memoriam

The Holland Society of New York was organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the history and settlement of New Netherland by the Dutch, to perpetuate the memory, foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of its members, to maintain a library relating to the Dutch in America, and to prepare papers, essays, books, etc., in regard to the history and genealogy of the Dutch in America. The Society is principally organized of descendants in the direct male line of residents of the Dutch colonies in the present-day United States prior to or during the year 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited. De Halve Maen (ISSN 0017-6834) is published quarterly by The Holland Society. Subscriptions are $28.50 per year; international, $35.00. Back issues are available at $7.50 plus postage/handling or through PayPaltm. POSTMASTER: send all address changes to The Holland Society of New York, 1345 Sixth Ave., 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105. Telephone: (212) 758-1675. Fax: (212) 758-2232. E-mail: info@hollandsociety.org Website: www.hollandsociety.org Copyright © 2019 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Cover: Joseph Pennell, “That liberty shall not perish from the earth– Buy liberty bonds Fourth Liberty Loan,” poster (Heywood Strasser & Voigt Litho. Co. N.Y., 1918). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

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Editor’s Corner

N HIS 1930 prelude to Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, Frederick Lewis Allen wrote, “If time were suddenly to turn back to the earliest days of the Post-war Decade, and you were to look about you, what would seem strange to you? Since 1919 the circumstance of American Life have been transformed—yes, but exactly how?” From his close-time vantage, Allen entertainingly related the tremendous cultural upheaval of the 1919–1929 decade. To expand on his idea, this issue of de Halve Maen republishes four speeches from the 1919 Holland Society’s annual banquet to reveal how the world of The Holland Society has transformed over the succeeding century. The similarities and differences between then and now are startling. When the all-male annual banquet took place on January 16, 1919, the Armistice ending World War I had been signed for only two months. Wartime flags of the Allies still decorated the hall along with the Society’s banner and American flag, while hutspot, a Society favorite, was eliminated from the menu in keeping United States Food Administration requests. Nonetheless, all the evening’s speeches reflected relief over the war’s end. In 1918, sixty-nine Society members were in the military, with an additional ninety-three sons of members. Society president Seymour Van Santvoord notes in his welcoming address, “Tonight, we meet in the elation of victory, the triumph of liberty, the assurance that righteousness has not perished on this earth. And in the belief that no one of the millions who have been freely offering their life-blood as a sacrifice upon the altar of human freedom shall have died or suffered in vain.” But relief was tempered by a cloud of uncertainty. “What kind of world did we fight for?,” is asked over and over. “Is the treaty of peace which the world awaits in breathless expectancy to be founded upon the fundamental principles of liberty and human justice,” Van Santvoord ponders, “or become the plaything of secret diplomacy and the ‘backstairs’ method— shall this latest and most momentous of them all, itself plant the seeds of future wars?” One thing is clear, the speakers were aware that their world was rapidly changing. Nothing brought this into a sharper focus than the death eleven days earlier of Theodore Roosevelt. One of the Society’s charter members, Roosevelt represented to the Society’s old guard the “intense and deathless Americanism . . . that made him great among all great men of action.” Yet, Roosevelt’s status had not stopped a spreading public distrust over Dutch-American loyalties. The Kingdom of the Netherlands, located between Great Britain and Germany, had remained neutral during the war. The flight of Kaiser Wilhelm into permanent exile in the Netherlands heightened suspicions. Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond, of Scots descent, sarcastically reflected, “I decline to stand here and praise the Dutch. In the first place, not knowing how much intelligence there is in this audience, I am afraid somebody might think when I said ‘Dutch,’ that I meant ‘German.’ Not quite as bad as that? I accept the situation. Certainly it is true that because the Kaiser has now found a haven of refuge behind the protecting skirts

of the Queen of Holland.” But humor aside, the speeches all exhibit concern over social upheaval and the proposed League of Nation’s role in creating a new world order. “Democracy isn’t a question of majorities,” Richmond continues. “There are many millions in this world and that there are many hundred thousands, if not millions, in this country who regard democracy somehow as the sort of thing recommended by Lenin and Trotzky, and I think our chief business in this country at this moment is to see that this interpretation of democracy doesn’t get root here.” Dr. Jacob Schurman emphasized that although Holland gave to the world religious equality, political liberty, the first system of international law, they also “underwent the great sacrifice—for it is a sacrifice—of renouncing their own speech and adopting the English language as the language of the nation,” suggesting that “the nationality of a people isn’t secure unless the citizens and residents of the country learn the language of the country.” “We believe that we have started upon a new era,” Dr. Richmond suggests. “We are going to offer at least this democracy which we prize so much, we are going to offer it to, although we aren’t going to thrust it upon, the other nations of the world.” Yet, it was feared that such nations as “Guatemala and Greece and the island of Haiti and Abyssinia” could not aid in the support of democracy. Dr. Franklin Henry Giddings proclaimed that “the liberties of men reside within themselves and are in their own keeping and cannot be created by drafting good resolutions or by pious resolves.” Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell added, “We aren’t ready to recognize that other nations have equal rights with the United States in the affairs of the new world.” Ironically, nothing heightened anxiety more than the vote in three states that very day ensuring the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition. Dr. Giddings, reflected that, as the evening’s topic is “Liberty,” while coming to the dinner his eye caught an evening newspaper’s headline, “United States goes dry.” Prohibition loomed over the festivities. “I trust, that many of our fellow citizens feel as I do,” he adds, “that the country has made a profound mistake which it will deeply regret, in taking the control of appetite out of the realm of manners and morals and the ‘behavior proper to a gentleman’ and making it a formality of law.” New York society in 1919 faced a decade of rapid change. The Holland Society lost a benefactor, friend, and guiding light on October 19, 2019, with the passing of long-term trustee Robert Guestier Goelet. I will deeply miss Bob’s wit, generosity, and true passion for the Dutch colonial period and its legacy.

David William Voorhees Editor

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The Holland Society A Century Ago: Speeches from the Thirty-Fourth Annual Banquet January 16, 1919

HE THIRTY-FOURTH Annual Dinner of The Holland Society was held at Delmonico’s, Fifth Avenue and Fortyfourth Street, on Thursday evening, January 16, 1919. This was the first Annual Banquet of the Society in many years which had not been at the Waldorf-Astoria. Preceding the dinner an informal reception took place in the anterooms and escorts were assigned to the representatives of the Societies invited as honorary guests. “Hutspot” was again this year eliminated from the menu, in keeping with the various requests of the United States Food Administration. The menu, like that at the banquet last year, consisted of two white cards tied at the top with orange ribbons and bearing at the top of the front card, above the menu proper, the seal of the Society in orange, while the names of the speakers appeared on the inner card. The effect was in harmony with the orange color scheme at the tables. The hall was decorated with the flags of the Allies, while the banner of the Society was suspended over the President’s chair flanked on either side by the flags of Colonial Holland, Holland of today, and the Stars and Stripes—all arranged in a sheaf formation. No souvenir was provided by the Banquet Committee, as it had been deemed wise to make the cost of the dinner as low as possible. The addresses of the evening follow:

ADDRESS OF WELCOME Hon. Seymour Van Santvoord

N BEHALF OF the members of The Holland Society of New York I cordially welcome its distinguished guests who have complimented us by their presence tonight. At this time of universal rejoicing, when the curtain has fallen upon the most dreadful tragedy in authentic history— with the epilogue to be pronounced at the Peace Table alone remaining—the spirit in which we have assembled adds to our joy in the pleasures of hospitality, as it These speeches are taken from Yearbook of The Holland Society of New York 1919, prepared by the recording secretary.

arouses a keener delight in those of good fellowship. A year ago, with all organized society at grips in mortal combat, and with death poised in waiting to exact its toll from our own gallant countrymen, on their way to the battle fields of France, it was in sadness of heart and foreboding spirit that we came to this annual reunion. With courage high and purpose unshaken and a grim resolve to see the bloody business through at whatsoever cost, it is true; but in full realization of the long and weary waiting which must intervene, the heavy sacrifices, the agony and despair, the endless sorrow which must be exacted of humanity before the greatest crime of the ages should have been expiated. Tonight, we meet in the elation of victory, the triumph of liberty, the assurance that righteousness has not

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Delmonico’s at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street circa 1920.

perished on this earth. And in the belief that no one of the millions who have been freely offering their life-blood as a sacrifice upon the altar of human freedom shall have died or suffered in vain, it is not now in apprehension, in sadness or in mourning, but in unrestrained rejoicing that we have met to exalt the ideals for which this war has been fought, while we extol the lofty spirit and sublime sacrifices of those who have made possible the victory. But while we give full rein to our rejoicing we are soberly mindful that although the victory has been won, the Arc de Triomphe has not yet been erected. As the blood of the martyrs was not the edifice itself but only the seed of the Church, so the triumph of arms in a war against slavery and oppression is but the acquisition and dedication of a site upon which the temple of liberty and justice shall be raised. What shall that structure typify? Is it to be merely a commonplace, or is it to embody the ideals for which America has fought? Are we prepared at last to recognize the great truth that inasmuch as the nations of the world are, respectively parts of one great whole, violation of the rights and liberties

of any one is an assault upon the liberties of all? Is the treaty of peace which the world awaits in breathless expectancy to be founded upon the fundamental principles of liberty and human justice or, become the plaything of secret diplomacy and the “backstairs” method—as Machiavelli cynically observes in respect to all the important peace conventions which have come down to us through history—shall this latest and most momentous of them all, itself plant the seeds of future wars? As loyal sons of our liberty-loving forefathers, and of the government consecrated to liberty which they helped to establish, we cherish an ardent hope that the approach to the Peace Table at Versailles may be along the pathway which the conscience of America carved out for itself when it entered the war: which although steep and narrow and hard to climb, in the end shall lead mankind up among the peaks of human liberty, into the gardens of our highest ideals and to the altar of our loftiest aspirations. In the meantime we all are rejoicing that Freedom has been given a new birth. We all are modestly proud that our own gallant sons have contributed their lifeblood

Seymour George Van Santvoord (1858–1938), a Public Service Commission chairman, dean of the Rensselaer County Bar Association, a banker, and an author of several books on Roman history, served as president of The Holland Society in 1916–1919.

to the baptismal font. We all are earnestly praying that in the new order which is to come the right of equal opportunities in the pursuit of happiness shall not be shackled by social or economical injustice, by religious intolerance, by political insistence. We all are passionately hoping that the right of self-determination shall be the first postulate in the new Magna Carta of human government—to the end that this basic principle of every free civilization shall be no longer at the mercy of those so-called “National aspirations,” which have their roots in the ignoble subsoil of national vanity and are watered by commercial selfishness and greed. And thus we all are united in conviction that upon the milestone which is to mark this latest triumphant advance in the war for the liberation of mankind, by universal consent there should be inscribed that splendid axiom of the Convention of 1792—which breathes the loftiest aspiration of the French Revolution, which, as Victor Hugo declares, in a single sentence comprises all human social law—“The Liberty of the individual ends where the liberty of another individual begins!” The President then said: In recognition of that which at least ought to be closest to our hearts tonight, let us stand in a silent tribute to the memory of those members and sons of members of this Society, and as well to all those gallant countrymen of ours who have given their lives for liberty. (All rise) The President then said: Addressing myself now alone to the members of The Holland Society, (with the approval of the Trustees, and perhaps I should say also with that of their masters for the time being, the Autocratic Banquet Committee) I present for your consideration, and it is hoped your approval and adoption, this brief memorial tribute: The members of The Holland Society of New York, in annual reunion assembled, record their profound sorrow in the death of their distinguished fellow member, Theodore Roosevelt.1 As one of its charter members, his affiliation with the Society has remained unbroken nearly thirty-five years— United States president Theodore Roosevelt, an active member of The Holland Society, died in his sleep on January 5, 1919, from a blood clot. Thomas R. Marshall, vice president at the time, said, “Death had to take Roosevelt in his sleep, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

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Theodore Roosevelt (1858– 1919), was a New York State assemblyman at the time he joined The Holland Society on April 30, 1885. He would go on to an illustrious political career, serving as twenty-sixth president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.

under which circumstances alone his death would have aroused unusual emotion. But the conspicuous position which he occupied in the life of the world, his commanding influence in the beloved country of his birth, and the lofty eminence which he had attained in contemporaneous history prompt a modest expression of our pride and gratification that so rare an achievement. so remarkable an accomplishment, so splendidly unique a life-work should have sprung from the heritage of a Holland-Dutch ancestry, become American—which inheritance is his sentimental bond of affiliation in The Holland Society of New York. The dauntless courage, which before all other attributes must ever challenge the respect and admiration of mankind, the martial spirit, the unfathomable energy, the boundless enthusiasm, the amazing versatility, the spotless personal integrity, and above all else that which he himself first cherished, the intense and deathless A m e r i c a n i s m of Theodore Roosevelt, in their rare association at once made him great among all great men of action, with a lasting place in the history of his country’s highest ideals and notable accomplishments,and enshrined him forever in the hearts of his friends, as an exemplar of their ideals

in personal character and conduct. A brave and dauntless soldier in the war for the liberation of mankind, the sword as well as the laurel wreath should be laid upon his bier. A fearless and devoted patriot he has won immortality in the annals of liberty. A hater of sham and hypocrisy he has gained for himself a shrine in the temple of Truth. Militant to his latest breath, he died as he lived—with the sword in hand at the head of the storming party. And we may think of him as having “risen out of this dust” with fearless spirit, with heart at rest, and with those soul-stirring words of the immortal Latin singer on his dying lips— “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.”2 President Van Santvoord continuing: I am sure the Secretary may make a note that the tribute was adopted by acclimation in a rising vote. The President of the Society then said: In a letter which I recently received from Paris, describing the reception there of President Wilson, my correspondent state that as the President’s carriage approached, an emotional Royalist who was sitting astride one of the captured German cannon which lined the Champs-Elyseés frantically waved his hat and shouted, “Vive Le Roi Wilson et La Reine Galt.”3 While in this

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country we are not yet quite prepared to cheer King Wilson and Queen Galt as such, no citizen of this Republic, possessed with a spark of national pride, can have been unmoved while the head of the State was being acclaimed throughout Europe as the arbiter of the fate of civilization, and no one in this assembly of Simon Pure Americans will stand aloof from the only formal toast of the evening, which I now announce— The President of the United States. The President continued: Riding once upon the top of a London omnibus I overheard two troopers discussing their new Colonel. “Knows ’ow to swear a bit don’t ’e?” To which the other rejoined, “ ’E’s a masterpiece, just opens his mouth and lets it say what it likes.” That is precisely the privilege which has been accorded the distinguished gentlemen who are now to address us, so that if they wander never so far from your own cherished ideals of liberty, you are to remember that they are well within their rights. Over in the Beaver River region of the John Brown’s tract there is a sylvan spring which has held its fame more than a century.4 Upon the rugged beech overhanging the pool, an old hunter of the neighborhood once tacked a piece of birch bark, upon which he had scrawled with a burnt stick, “Lizard Spring—the best water in the North Woods. P.S. Put in a little whiskey.” In the exercise of the same discriminating imagination, your Banquet Committee has shrewdly provided a dash of Scotch to dilute the limpid crystal of our Holland Dutch oratory. The Chancellor of Union University is also the President of Union College. I graduated at Union College—as I fancy I hear my friend observe—after a fashion. My father graduated there in a very splendid fashion—likewise my two uncles, both my grandfathers and a round dozen of cousins, so that there is a deep personal sentiment in the pleasure with which I now present to you the man who has done such splendid work at Union College— Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Odes (III.2.13) by Roman lyric poet Horace. The line translates: “It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland.”

Queen Galt is a reference to Edith Wilson, formerly Edith Bolling Galt, the second wife of United States President Woodrow Wilson.

Beaver River History. One-fifth of the Beaver River is located in Brown’s Tract, Herkimer County, New York. Brown’s Tract was named for John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, who acquired nearly 200,000 acres of land in upstate New York in 1798 in a wilderness eventually referred to as the Adirondack Mountains.

ADDRESS BY DR. CHARLES ALEXANDER RICHMOND, A. B., A. M., D. D., LL. D., PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE

R. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen: The crime of being a descendant of the Scotch I neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but occasionally a bit of wisdom comes from some other country now and then, and the one that occurs to me now is the retort courteous: I didn’t care very much for this introduction. But they have a saying in the South, that if you have anything to say to a mule, you want to say it to his face. I cannot imagine how a Chairman, or a Committee, or a Society will have the courage to invite a Scotchman here and confront him not with a bowl of punch but with a “typewriter.” It is adding insult to injury! And for that reason, if for no other, I decline to stand here and praise the Dutch. (Laughter and applause.) In the first place, not knowing how much intelligence there is in this audience, I am afraid somebody might think when I said “Dutch,” that I meant “German.” Not quite as bad as that? I accept the situation. Certainly it is true that because the Kaiser has now found a haven of refuge behind the protecting skirts of the Queen of Holland, this doesn’t make him a Dutchman—and it doesn’t make the Dutchman, thank God, a German!5 That is one reason why I decline to praise the Dutch, although you might think that to praise them would be to paint the lily, to add a perfume to the rose, to gild refined gold, and to add a new color to the rainbow.6 But there is another reason. The Scotch are as chary and sparing of their compliments as they are said to be of their money. (Laughter) I remember hearing all my life from my old Scotch father the anecdote, that you all know, of the Scotchman who went to Glasgow and complained to his friend Donald, that it was a dreadfully expensive place, Glasgow; that he hadn’t been there a day before “Bang! went a saxpence.” But I never heard the conclusion of that story until I happened to hear a Scotchman on a train in Scotland a few years ago, who said, “There is something more to that story: His friend said to him, “How did you spend a whole saxpence?” he said “Maistly upon wine and women.” Now I came from a town called Schenectady—it must have a familiar sound. It is either Indian or Dutch—no one has been able to find out which; it might be

either. In the days when religious liberty was something quite new, as applied at least to education, a college was founded there, the first undenominational college founded in this country. It was founded by Dutchmen in Schenectady. They called it Union College and in the Charter there is a provision that at no time shall a majority of the trustees be of any one religious denomination. That was in 1795, and I will say to the credit of the Dutchmen, that that could not have occurred under any other nationality, even the Scotch. I will say further, that I suppose so far as we can trace the birth of modern political liberty, (I hate to say this, but I will) it dates back to the United States of Holland in 1581. There was one curious thing about that, however. They incorporated a very remarkable provision in the instrument which we might call their Charter, but which was really an instrument of abjuration; they embodied in this Charter, that no bill of taxation should be passed without unanimous consent—and I am wondering how that would appeal to Mr. Kitchin,7 for instance, in these days of liberty—I propose to be personal if I choose, because I have already been informed by your Chairman that liberty begins certainly with liberty of speech. Now, the feeling uppermost in my mind tonight is a feeling of profound gratitude that this war was not permitted to end until we had a share in it. (Applause.) It has been a magnificent victory. It is a victory more complete, I believe, than any one of us dared to hope; but if we had had no share

in the fighting, we should have had no share in the victory. As I look back upon the days in the latter part of 1914 and the darker days that were still to follow, I confess I have no feeling of pride. Belgium had been overrun; England was losing men sometimes at the rate of 5,000 a day; we were sending notes and protests, so-called, that had about as many teeth in them as a dish of sweetbreads, and the Hun was clawing his way through Belgium, mutilating children, violating women, shooting nurses whose only fault was that they had soft hearts, sinking our ships, weaving their devilish plots under the very shadow of our capitol. I will get this off my mind at once, and I think I am speaking the mind of many here. (Applause.) I think we must all agree that in spite of the magnificent showing we have made, there is still something to atone for. But we arrived at last, and when we arrived, it was a great arrival. The Germans hardly believed we had arrived, until we had more Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia in November 1918, and fled to exile in Doorn, Netherlands, where he died in 1941.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands sheltering of the Kaiser caused the American public to question the loyalty of the members of The Holland Society. The New York Tribune noted on April 9, 1918, under the headline, “Holland Society Patriotic,” that the members of The Holland Society at the previous night’s smoker “left no doubt in the mind of any one as to their loyalty to the United States. Not one but several patriotic resolutions were passed unanimously, and the greater part of the meeting devoted to patriotic speeches. . . . Copies of the resolutions adopted at the meeting were forwarded to President Wilson, Secretary Lansing and several other government officers.”

Democratic North Carolina Congressional Representative Claude Kitchin was House majority leader in 1919. He had opposed United States entrance into World War I in 1917.

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than arrived. I heard of a German once who arrived in San Francisco during the gold fever, and some months after, he met an American whom he had seen here in New York. The American had been around the world in the meantime, but the German could not imagine where he had come from, so he began to question him in his German way, and he said, “Haf you come the prairie across?” The American replied “No.” The German said, “Haf you come the Isthmus over?” The American said, “No.” “Haf you come the Horn around” “No.” The German replied “Then you haf not arrived.” It is a most perfect example of German psychology. (Applause and laughter.) And when we did arrive, they could not understand. As one of the German officers who was captured said, “They don’t know how to fight. You never know whether they are going to shoot you with a gun or whether they are going to hit you over the head with a club, or whether they are going to stab you in the stomach with a bayonet, or whether they are going to spit in your eye with tobacco juice—they have no system.” Well, we arrived. Of course we cannot get out of our minds the terrible sacrifices: ten million, perhaps, dead, ten million more crippled; how many homes desolated, how many women driven mad by abuse, how many children mutilated, how many towns destroyed, how many good ships at the bottom of the sea? God only knows. Perhaps we might be inclined to think that we have paid high for what we have gotten, but I for one don’t think so, for when you have

gathered together all the sum of these untold treasures it seems to me that the war has paid. In my judgment what we were paying was the price of a new redemption. It may seem extreme to you—it doesn’t seem so to me—but I believe it was the price of the saving of the soul of the world. And if you think it extreme, all you have to do is to think back over the days of 1914, when France was corrupt politically, and in many other ways; when England was a seething mass of discontent and seemed to have many of the surface signs of decadence; when our own America was apparently thinking of only two things: money and pleasure. No one knows better than you who live in New York, that the churches were empty and the cabarets were full, and the national hero was a tango dancer.8 It did seem to every thoughtful man even then, and it was said by very many not only in private conversation but publicly that we were riding to a fall. Then the war came and it seemed as if a fresh breeze had blown through the souls of the nations. Germany had banked on that situation; they had gone upon the theory that England was a decadent nation and that the United States was so enamored of the gold dollar that she wouldn’t be awakened by any outrage. If we had refused that challenge, we should have been like the rich young ruler in the Scriptures, who made the great refusal. In the imagination of Dante that young man’s soul is blown about the confines between heaven and hell; and if we for any reason had refused to take our share in this, the greatest war for liberty that the world has

ever seen, we should have been in the position of that young man; not quite bad enough for hell, but certainly not good enough for heaven. (Applause.) So I say, thinking of all the losses we have sustained, thinking of the thousands upon thousands of our own boys who are resting under the white crosses in France, I thank God for this war! I wonder whether we understand, even in this enlightened country, what we have gained by it. We say very glibly that we have been fighting for democracy. You know, Robert Louis Stevenson says, “Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but principally by catch words.” And we have had certain catch words in this war that we have used very glibly: “Liberty,” “Equality,” and above all, “Democracy.” The President, himself, has coined a phrase which has been a Godsend to the cracker box orator ever since. Whenever he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he said, “We must make the world safe for Democracy.” I suppose if we could by some delicate surgical operation get into the minds of the millions who have applauded that sentiment, we should find some very strange results. I suppose a good many should feel that every one was going to be his own boss, but there would be other interpretations that would be grotesque; they would be humorous if they weren’t, many of them, tragic. I haven’t the slightest bit of doubt that there are many millions in this world and that there are many hundred thousands, if not millions, in this country who regard democracy somehow as the sort of thing recommended by Lenin and Trotzky,9 and I think our chief business in this country at this moment is to see that this interpretation of democracy doesn’t get root here. The germ of this is already with us, as we know full well, but we must see to it that it does not become epidemic. A germ is no respecter of persons. A germ is a kind of cosmopolitan; he doesn’t care what kind of a person he attacks. He gets into any system Vernon Castle (1887–1969). Popular ballroom teacher Vernon Castle with his wife, Irene, created the American Tango Dance in 1911. A tango dance craze swept the nation in 1914 after the couple opened a dancing school in New York City called “Castle House.”

9 The Russian Revolution, led by Bolseviks Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky among others, began in 1917 and ended in 1923 with the formation of the Soviet Union. In 1919, these two political theorists promoted a new government based on a socialist democracy. 10 The 1918 influenza pandemic is the worst pandemic in modern history. It is estimated that one-third of the world’s population became infected with at least 50 million dying worldwide and about 675,000 deaths occurring in the United States.

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he happens to come across. That germ has gotten in and has become epidemic in many of the countries of the Old World—what we call the Old World. It has control in Russia. It is contending for control, as we know, in Germany and in Austria; it is pretty strong in Italy under the name of syndicalism, and it is very strong also in France. Thank God, it isn’t so strong in England and in the United States. The Anglo-Saxon mind doesn’t seem to be quite as good a culture for the bacillus Bolsheviki as other minds. We have had freedom longer, we have had our self-government longer and therefore it is harder for it to get a hold upon us, but it is a crowd disease like influenza, and it is very astounding how it manages to make its way even in constitutions that might almost seem to be immune.10 We say democracy has won over autocracy. What we have to fear now is not a man on horseback. What we have to fear now is the autocracy of mere numbers. Democracy isn’t a question of majorities. The control of the mass is a counsel of anarchy. The mass never did control itself; it never did raise itself and never can. We read in the Old Testament—The Old Testament is the only part of the Scriptures I have cared to read during the war, especially the imprecatory psalms. They have fitted a man’s thought better than any other part of the Bible. It is hard for me to get anything out of even such true and beautiful injunctions as “Forgive your enemies.” It reminds me of an old Scotchman. (I get back to the Scotch again, and it is astonishing how the Scotch history and character will illustrate almost any phase of human thought.) There is a story related by the Scotch, of how an old Chief in the Highlands was about to die, and his strong sons were standing by him, and an old Covenanter minister was there, and he said, “Before you die, you must forgive your enemies.” “I will not forgive them,” said the Chieftan. But his end drew nearer, and finally, raising himself upon his elbow and flashing a light out of his black eyes and addressing himself to his oldest son, who stood by his bed, he said to the minister, “I forgive them,” but, turning to his son, he said, “May God damn your soul if you ever forgive them.” That is about the feeling I have. In the Old Testament we constantly meet with this statement, when it refers to any reformation or any improvement that took place: That God raised up such and such a man— and that man did it; he raised the mass. So I say, the thing we must watch very carefully is

that we shall not get the notion that the mass of people here or anywhere else can save themselves or raise themselves. (Applause.) And it would pay us very well in effort and in money to get it into the minds of our own people, that democracy isn’t a form of government, but a principle of human life. We talk a great deal about the fathers, and they were great men; they weren’t in love with any form of government; they chose a Republic, but they weren’t in love with that form; they chose it because they thought in this form they could best express the spirit of democracy. It has succeeded beyond all our expectations, but the reason it has succeeded isn’t because of the perfection of the mechanism but because of the soundness of the principle. This country has succeeded because, with all our weaknesses and all the national diseases under which we have suffered, we have always kept true to the love of liberty; we have always believed in, although we haven’t always practiced, equal justice; we have always had in our minds a true and sound conception of real democracy, although we have never yet attained it. That is the reason! These men, who had the molding of this Republic for at least twenty years after it was founded, were the hardest headed of men; they were men who knew facts as facts; they knew what brass tacks were— they had stepped on them. They were men who did concrete thinking; who knew exactly what they wanted, and who could bring sound principles to every concrete problem. And besides that, they were men of first-rate ability. You have only to mention the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, John Marshall, and Benjamin Franklin, and perhaps greatest of all, your own citizen here, Alexander Hamilton. Talleyrand said he would place Alexander Hamilton alongside of Napoleon and Charles James Fox. Well, those were the men in a nation of four millions. We have now a nation of one hundred millions. Can you name offhand a group of men in this generation whom we dare stand alongside of them? It is a surprising fact that we cannot do it. Therefore I say, the question today is a question of leadership; it is a question of getting men, getting men of sufficient size to face the gigantic problems that stand before us today. They had some queer notions in those days. They believed they ought to choose the best men for the most important service, without asking what party they belonged to. That isn’t what we do nowadays. In founding

this country, they had some other ideas that we have gotten away from, for better or for worse. They believed in individual initiative; they believed that it was better to reward the competent and not to reward the incompetent. They believed that the way to build up an industry was not to take all its profits. They believed in peace, but they didn’t believe in pacifists. They had disloyal men to deal with in those days; they didn’t always hang them, but they didn’t appoint them on committees to welcome back the soldiers who had fought in the Revolution. (prolonged applause.) But those were some of the things our fathers believed in. We may talk about popular government as much as we please, but the reason this country has stood through all the terrible storms that have assailed us is because in great crises of our national history, we have had great leaders; and we shall do well to think of these great leaders as our greatest national asset, and we shall do well to think of the ideals for which they stood as the basis of all our success. Abraham Lincoln said once, “This nation will last forever, unless it commits suicide.” There are many ways of committing suicide besides taking Rough-on-Rats.11 We can fall off a precipice, or we can follow the lead of some socialistic orator until we lose ourselves and suffocate one another in the mud. There are many ways. But unless we choose for our leaders men better qualified—I am speaking generally of the rank and file of the men we call our leaders in public life, and gentlemen, I have no sympathy with the indiscriminate abuse of public men—but unless we learn to choose for our public leaders men of greater capacity, men of more disinterested patriotism, men of more experience, and men better fitted for the job for which they are chosen, than we do on the average now, this democracy for which at least 60,000 of our boys have laid down their lives will be safe neither here nor anywhere else in the world. (Applause.) Now, just one word more. We believe that we have started upon a new era, although human nature isn’t changed. Nevertheless, we believe we have entered upon a new stage in history. We are going to offer at least this democracy which we prize so much, we are going to offer it to, although we aren’t going to thrust it upon, the other Rough on Rats was a popular late nineteenth-century arsenic-based pesticide.

Proposals to create the League of Nations were approved on January 25, 1919, at the Paris Peace Convention. The League officially began one year later when the Treaty of Versailles took effect.

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nations of the world. We are starting— leading, we may say—this enterprise of the League of Nations.12 We all believe in it. Some believe that the golden hour has struck. Pray God, it may. But we have got to get it out of the twilight soon and into the region of concrete thinking. Certainly the way to make it a success isn’t by any airy and general treatment of the subject. We cannot do it all at once. The President has said, (and we believe rightly) that we don’t want to enter upon this unless all the nations of the world shall come in. He doesn’t mean, of course, that we shall wait until they come in—that would be impossible—but he is describing and defining the scope and purpose of it all, and we believe we will agree with him upon that, but some of us think we can begin without waiting so long, some of us think we can begin by the right combination. Obviously we must make a choice. We cannot make a League of Peace with the United States and Guatemala and Greece and the island

of Haiti and Abyssinia, but we can make it with France and Great Britain and Italy. That will do to begin it. I will say more: we can begin with two, if they are the right two. If Great Britain and the United States unite in spirit, unite with their fleets and with their land forces to keep the peace, what power on earth will dare to break the peace? (Applause.) And let me say one thing in conclusion: While we must see to it that this League of Peace is a strong league, and we must help to make it strong, we mustn’t do it by weakening ourselves. It is a fallacy to suppose that the democracy of the world will be made stronger or more safe by making it less strong and less safe in this democracy. Internationalism is the wildest and the most absurd of all propositions. Will a man be a better citizen because his family ties are loose? Isn’t the man the best member of the State, who loves his home and who stands ready always to defend it? And isn’t that nation strongest that is made up of such

men? And hasn’t the world, if it is going to be strong, got to be composed of strong nations? It is our business then not to encourage the breaking up of Europe into many small states; to make Balkan States of the whole of Europe; to keep us in the fever of anxiety, but to strengthen the hands of the strong nations, that together we may be strong, just as strong men by their very strength are able to co-operate and unite with other strong men. So I say, to make this League of Nations strong, you do not want to have the Frenchman love France less, or the Englishman love England less, or the American love America less. We shall strengthen the League of Nations the most effectively by strengthening our own America and by standing more firmly for the ideals of justice and of equal rights for which we have fought, for which we are prepared to fight, and which we mean to make more real in these difficult reconstruction days that lie before us. (Applause.)

ADDRESS BY DR. FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, A.B., A.M., Ph. D., LL. D., PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY President Van Santvoord: And now you have observed how wisely the Banquet Committee provided this jug of Scotch whiskey to warm up the plain Mohawk Valley Dutch spring water. Next it is in order for us to enjoy a different tipple. This time we are to have King William with a bit of champagne thrown in, because the English blood of the next speaker, fortunately for himself, was warmed up by the intermarriage of one of his ancestors with one of the dear, brave, old Huguenot stock. The pleasure which I have in presenting the next speaker also embodies the element of University affiliation to a fanciful extent since my great grandfather not only graduated, but received his degree of LL. D. from old King’s College, the colonial predecessor of Columbia; and as for the personal element, I have never forgotten that my undergraduate obstreperousness was directly traceable to a then upper classman at Union College, the gentleman who is now to address you—Dr. Franklin Henry Giddings.

T IS AN unusual pleasure on an occasion like this to find oneself one of three seated together, whose reminiscences run so singularly one way, and yet it is a serious business to undertake to follow Dr. Richmond, and it would be an unwise person who in such circumstances attempted to deal with the large questions of our time with that lightness of touch which is Dr. Richmond’s own. I have been, Mr. President, somewhat disturbed in remembering

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that the topic of our talk this evening is “Liberty,” because,as I came downtown my eye caught the headlines of an evening paper which read, “United States goes dry. Mrs. Lebaudy goes to jail.”13 Is there a subtle connection here not explained by the press? Has the American people decided to put itself in jail? You have been so personal, Mr. President, as to allude to ancestry, and that has reminded me of a circumstance of which I think I may rightly be proud. While looking over some ancient documents of Massachusetts Bay, I made the discovery that my ancestor, George Giddings of Ipswich, for numerous successive terms a member of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, distinguished himself in a somewhat unusual way. As a matter of principle he announced that he should refuse to pay a tax levied by the town of Ipswich upon all citizens for the support of the preaching of the Gospel. He was a Puritan and far from having any objection to the preaching of the gospel, he was, I learn, very fond of it, but he said, in effect, “We have come to this new land for the purpose of establishing liberty, and we shall never have liberty here if we are to have a State Church here.” The case went to the courts; and to the General Court, and was decided against him. But in that first case in our history in which this contention was raised, the germ of liberty, as President Richmond says, was put into our colonial and afterwards into our national life, and that principle of liberty for which George Giddings contended became a part of our American liberty and of our American democracy. (Applause.) In my boyhood it was my good fortune to live in that Western county of Massachusetts, which had been a land fought over by English and Dutch claimants, and among the people that I knew were representatives of both old English families and families from Holland, and tonight I recall as a curious circumstance that my first notions of liberty were obtained from my Dutch neighbors and not from neighbors of English descent. My own people and their relatives and neighbors of English descent were of the stern sort. I don’t think that they believed very much in individual liberty. In fact I long since came to the conclusion that the Puritans didn’t come to this country to establish individual liberty; they came to establish group liberty, or practically the liberty of an organization, the liberty of men who thought alike in certain matters, and who didn’t propose to have their

control over them interfered with either by the Church of England or by Quakers or Baptists, and their attitude toward life I found very prevalent as late as my own generation. But among the Burghardts, the Van Deusens, and other Dutch families, I found another feeling. It was a strong feeling for personal liberty, and I liked it. It colored my thinking. A little later when I went to Schenectady (the good old town of “Dora” as we called it) as a student at Union College, I mingled as one might expect in the undenominational college that Dr. Richmond has described, with boys from all parts of the country and of all religious denominations, and I found among them the true spirit of personal liberty. It was a real individualism, a sense of the responsibility of the individual, a notion that while group solidarity in Church, in State, in industry, in education, has its priceless value, there is another liberty also priceless, the liberty of the man himself to follow the dictates of his own conscience, and be guided within all proper limits by his own reason. I have since come to think that it is this liberty above all which has made our Nation the power that it is today. Why was it that when we had entered late into the war with Germany, within so short a time we massed and organized tremendous forces, not always perhaps without mistakes, but on the whole with marvelous success? I am confident that it was because America for 300 years has been making men who aren’t afraid of individual initiative, who do not hesitate to take personal responsibility, who never have failed when the question has been put squarely man to man “Will you do your share?” (Applause.) Unhappily there

has been infused into this strong, rugged individualism of ours a measure of certain other qualities that perhaps have in a way checked our better activities. I am reminded by the Scotch allusions and stories of another, that used to be told by that much beloved man, the Reverend Dr. Robert Collyer, who, I believe never preached the pacifism that is now associated with the Church from which he departed. He said that once in the town of Glasgow there was an artisan who married a pretty lass from the Highlands. They lived together happily and faithfully for many years until the wife “took sick” and neared her end. Calling her husband she said, “Tara, I have a last request to make of ye.” He listened and she said, “Tara, when I am gone, ye must take me back to the Highlands to bury me; I never could rest easy in Glasgow.” Tarn thought a while and answered, “Well, Janet, we’ll try ye a while in Glasgow first, and if ye can na’ rest we’ll take ye back to the Highlands.” It is possible that not only among our Scotch friends, but among others, there has been a little too much of the sort of thought that was in the mind of Thomas. I am reminded of another story told by a colleague who used to spend his summers in Northern Vermont. He and his wife were fond of colonial furniture, and they picked 13 A reference to the Evening World headlines of January 16, 1919. On that day, Nebraska, Missouri, and Wyoming voted to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, ensuring that Prohibition would become law of the land (New York had not yet voted). The news broke as the members gathered for the annual meeting. Jacques Lebaudy, a wealthy heir to a French sugar refining empire, known for his eccentricity and his attempt to establish a new nation, the Empire of the Sahara, was shot to death by his wife, former actress Marguerite Augustine Doliere, on January 11, 1919, at her home in Westbury, Long Island.

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it up whenever they had opportunity. They learned one day that a young farmer, whose father had been a sea captain and had made interesting collections, had committed suicide, and that the furniture was to be sold at public auction. They drove to the house and were welcomed by the young widow and her mother, and were told that they might inspect the place. The old woman immediately began telling the story of the sad event. “You see,” she said, “It was this way. Hiram, that morning went out to the barn about the usual time to do the chores, and he was gone the longest while. Bye and bye I got worried like, and I said to Martha here, says I, ‘It seems to me that Hiram has been gone a dreadful long time,’ and Martha she said, ‘All right! Let him stay!’ But I got so uneasy that I put on my bonnet and went out to the barn to see what ever had become of Hiram, and I hope to be laid out cold if there warn’t Hiram ahangin’ from the beam stun dead, and not a chore done!” In working out the ideals and fabric of democracy we must preserve our liberty and at the same time get the chores done. We must create that efficiency without which we shall not hold our own in the world of today. We must steer carefully therefore between our conceptions of liberty. Do we want mere mass liberty? Do we want mere group action, or do we want to preserve and develop that intelligence, that sturdy activity and that personal responsibility, which after all have made us great? If we do, then I think we have to remember that we cannot preserve liberty and develop it, and secure its best fruits if we depend altogether upon the mechanism of government, or even upon law, important as that is. There is a liberty higher than that which has every moment to be safeguarded by law. In the history of civilization, it was, of course, a long step when law and order were established and in great measure brought to an end those strifes, feuds, vendettas, that made progress impossible. But, what happens to a people that has behaved itself only because it has been compelled by a superior force to behave? Do we not see today in Russia, in Berlin and in Bremen,14 what happens when men who have never learned how to control themselves intelligently are given liberty by a sudden removal of restraints? Surely we want in this country the liberty that is created and maintained by men whose freedom is rooted in conscience and in intelligence, in morals and in manners, rather than in the letter of the law.

(Applause.) It is for this reason, I suppose, and I trust, that many of our fellow citizens feel as I do—that the country has made a profound mistake which it will deeply regret, in taking the control of appetite out of the realm of manners and morals and the “behavior proper to a gentleman” and making it a formality of law. (Applause.) I believe that the highest civilization cannot be attained if we go too far—and now I am speaking with a due sense of responsibility as a descendant of Puritans— if we go too far in carrying out the Puritan idea, that religion largely consists in making our neighbors religious. I think that we have something yet to learn from England, from Holland, from France, the countries where the modern liberty of the Western world arose, was nourished and grew strong. In those countries to this day liberty is rooted and grounded in the notion that it is up to every individual man to maintain control over himself, guiding his conduct by the reason and the conscience within himself, apart from which no system of laws, no system of oversight of man by his fellow men in the name of righteousness can produce the real thing. (Applause.) And I would go farther. I hope that we shall not too much insist at Paris in imposing our ideas upon the world. (Applause.) I most sincerely desire that our ideas, so far as they are worthy and wise, shall make their way into the world and throughout the world, and fructify the moral and social energies of mankind. But I do not wish to see this country saying to the other countries of the world: “We have wisdom; we know what democracy is; we know what justice is; we know how the world should be organized politically, and we are graciously telling you all about it, and expect you to accept our philosophy and our plan. (Applause.) Yet, I want to see a League of Nations—if I may say a word about the subject on which Dr. Richmond has spoken so admirably. I want to see a League of Nations ripen out of the ideas of the first man in this world who had a reasonable, a thoroughly intelligent idea on the subject. That man was the Hollander—Hugo Grotius—the creator of international law. (Applause.) Hugo Grotius did not propose that the nations should get together and sign a pledge. He proposed something much more substantial. He proposed that the nations should deal with each other as rational men: that they should try as far as possible to bring their dealings with one another to that basis of fair understand-

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ing, of reasonableness, and of law, which already was taking shape in the beginnings of that body of principles which today we know as constitutional law within the State itself. It is true that a mere understanding among the peoples of the world to live with one another according to due process of law, and in keeping with the principles of our common morality and observance of those manners which are customary among well-bred men, is but a weak affair from the standpoint of those who suppose that all nations could be brought into a super-national organization by a pooling of sovereignties, and that thenceforth there would be no balance of power. The idea of a league of free and law-abiding nations to cooperate in maintaining international law is sound. The very different proposal to create a super-nation inclusive of all nations is preposterous. It is a suggestion to set up the most amazing perpetual motion machine that the mind of mankind has yet dreamed of. If, then, in the future as in the past, certain nations probably will observe the principles of international law, while others like Germany four years ago will try to destroy them, wherein lies our safety? You may say where, indeed, unless we resort to force? I answer, yes, let us resort to force when it becomes necessary, as it did in this latest war. If the issue should arise again, let us do again what we did this time. Let us not assume that until men are prepared to live together in reasonableness, we can avoid all quarrels, for we shall not. How has the world made the advances that already it has made? Once a large part of mankind resorted every now and then to cannibalism. It doesn’t do that today. Why? Because men became too good to be cannibals? Certainly not; but because somebody invented a hoe, and then a plow, and it became easier and safer to obtain food by systematic agriculture than by head hunting. Once the whole world believed in slavery, and slavery was never pushed and expanded as it was just before we Americans became a Nation. England, in the days of Queen Anne, was in a furor of excitement over the African Company, which was a corporation organized to conduct the slave trade and put slaves into all the colonies of the new world. Among the principal stockholders of the African 14 The North Sea port of Bremen, Germany, is located on the Weser River. The so-called Bremen Soviet Republic was formed on January 10, 1919, in the aftermath of WWI. It lasted only twenty-five days before it was recaptured by the Weimer government.

Company, it may interest you to know, were Queen Anne, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archbishop of York. Did slavery drop out of the world because the whole world became converted to the doctrines of brotherly love? Indeed, no. It became possible for the world to grow, to do things

and to expand without slavery, because somebody invented the steam engine.15 The day may come when it will be cheaper and easier for everybody in the world to get what he wants because of some new invention or discovery which today we do not so much as dream of. If

so, war will cease. Until then the only thing we can be sure of is that more and more of the nations of the world, like more and more of the individuals of each nation, will through experience learn that the liberties of men reside within themselves and are in their own keeping and cannot be created

ADDRESS BY DR. JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN A. B., A. M., D. Sc., LL. D., PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY President Van Santvoord then said: Now, having had our Scotch and our King William, and our champagne, like all selfrespecting topers for the final dissipation we turn to a glass of pure distillation from the Holland Dutch, in the American style. His Excellency, the Minister from the Netherlands, reminds me that in the old country that is called “schnaps.” I have to go a bit further afield to find the element of personal University affiliation in the case of Cornell, but I find it to this extent: One of my sons-in-law graduated from Cornell. This young man is a Scotchman, and a member of that fine old Society of St. Andrew, whose President has honored us by his attendance tonight. You might know it from this little incident, that when I asked him, upon his request that he be allowed to have my beloved daughter in marriage, what merits he thought he had, he said, “I pretend only this one: that in all my University career, I have tried to pattern my life upon that of the distinguished head of Cornell University.” I ask you now to extend the cordial welcome which is especially due our fellow-member, the President of Cornell University.

R. PRESIDENT, and Fellow Members: We people of Dutch descent don’t boast of our thrift, or our acquisitiveness, or our gift of appropriating to ourselves the good things of the earth! When we have a banquet we invite the representatives of all other stocks and give them three-quarters of the places on the program. Moreover, this body would be willing to give them all. They have incidentally referred to the fact that Holland created and gave to the world religious equality and that Holland

gave to the world political liberty. Holland created and gave to the world the first system of international law, on which today you are attempting to build a new edifice on the foundations there sketched. And when the Scotch sent their kings to England, their Jameses and their Charleses, and they appropriated everything within sight and beyond, and the country had to be redeemed, the Baptists went over to Holland and learned religious liberty, and finally the British brought over a king from Holland to save their souls. The Dutch came here to the wilds of the new world and set up a new city on Manhattan Island, and when the others followed, with our usual generosity, we turned it over to them, with all the elements of civilization with which we had endowed their forefathers in the old world. But I don’t think that represents the greatest gift of the sons of Holland to this new world. There are two others I want to mention. One is that your ancestors felt the call to establish or help to establish in the New World a new nation, separate and apart from any other nation in the world, and with their usual self-sacrifice, they cooperated with the men of English speech in building on the foundations of English law a republic dedicated to liberty, justice, and democracy, which were the ideals of the Holland Dutch, quite as much at least as of the people whose language came to prevail here. Secondly, and this perhaps is still more important at the present time, your Dutch ancestors set an example for the United States, which I am sure will have to be followed if the unity and security of this republic are to be perpetuated. They underwent the great sacrifice—for it is a sacrifice—of renouncing their own speech and adopting the English language as the language of the nation. (Applause.) And we have a right to say today to all who have

come to the Republic in the years that followed, and who are now alive, that events since 1914 have convinced us that the nationality of a people isn’t secure unless the citizens and residents of the country learn the language of the country—the language of Washington, and Jefferson, and Lincoln. (Applause.) And the Holland Dutch set this great example to the newer comers who had come here to improve their lot in life, to share the blessings of our civilization. We have, I say, the right to prescribe that they shall observe at least the first fundamental requisite of good citizenship, to acquire the language of the nation to which they propose to belong. (Applause.) Some reference has already been made by my good friend, Dr. Richmond, to the need of leaders in a republic. I thought there was a slight note of despondency in what he said, though I may readily have misun15 Such views as expressed by Dr. Giddings, common among Americans of European descent in the early twentieth century, are soundly rejected by The Holland Society today.

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derstood him, because it may merely have happened at that stage of his remarks that he wasn’t indulging in the scintillating wit which brightened so much of the admirable address he made. I say, however, that I felt a tone of despondency in that portion of Dr. Richmond’s speech which I do not think justified. I have known, personally, many presidents of the United States, who in my opinion were great leaders, and I for one—though I realize today that there is a great scarcity of national leaders on the stage—believe that somehow, when they are needed, they will arrive. I think of Cleveland. 16 (Applause.) He was a plain man, a lawyer with a small practice, mayor of an up-state city, and he rose to the presidency of the United States, and in that high office became by sheer virtue of his character and his sturdy patriotism, and his devotion to duty, one of the great leaders of the country. (Applause.) I knew, too, a man of a different type, a man whom to know was to love—William McKinley, (Applause) a man who when called to the presidency seemed not much above the level of the average American, and yet who in that great office rose step by step, and proved himself a great leader of the people. And when he went to his grave he was mourned by the nation as one of their choicest sons.17 And you too, Mr. Chairman, have read resolutions commemorating the memory of another great leader whom this Society, whom these people of Dutch descent, have given to the nation. What a man he was, and what a leader! He was not merely a political leader, though he was great as a political leader—one of the greatest in fact—but he was a moral leader and a social leader, because such was the breadth of his personality and the multiplicity of his interests, touching humanity at so many points, that all good causes and all good men turned to him to lead them. And he led them, led them with his inexhaustible energy, and the freshness of eternal youth. It is hard to think that Theodore Roosevelt to our purposes lives no more.18 We in this Society bid him a proud farewell, as the most patriotic of Americans, the most distinguished of the men of our descent, twice President of the United States, and in this world-convulsing war, the wisest, the most far-seeing, and safest of all our national leaders. (Applause.) He wanted war for us in 1914, and in due time it came, came too late, as many of us thought, but come it did. And late though we entered into the war, it was permitted to

us—in the course of events, or shall I say under the hand of Providence—to turn the scale in the great world-contest. You have read within the week the statement of Chancellor Hertling, that in July of this year the Germans all expected the Allies to sue for peace and counted confidently on it.19 I don’t wonder at the statement, for I was in Europe at that time. Gentlemen, it is impossible, it would be impossible in the absence of experience to realize the discouragement, the gloom, the despondency, which had settled upon the Allied nations during the period of the last German drive, which began on March 21st and continued successfully up to the middle of July. But a change came on the 18th of July, and the effect was little less than miraculous. I was in London at the time and the London papers and Paris papers, and the papers, as I afterwards found, of the entire United Kingdom and of France described what took place in their issues of the 19th of July. Remember that from March 21st, the Germans had pushed the Allies like leaves before them. The German armies had crossed the Marne, and there was absolutely nothing to stop their advance to Paris. Amiens also was threatened— Amiens and the Channel ports. But on the 19th of July the cables flashed the news that The Germans have been stopped by the Americans and the Americans have taken a thousand prisoners.” (Applause.) Why, a thousand prisoners then meant more than a hundred thousand at a later date, because the stopping of the German advance and the taking of a thousand prisoners showed that the new force which had come to the Front, behind which there were hundreds of thousands and millions more, was capable of meeting, and in an equal combat, vanquishing the best trained soldiers in Europe. (Applause.) That was the point about which even our Allies were in doubt. For greatly as they admired the character of the Americans, fully as they recognized our gift of dash and initiative, they did not really know whether armies hastily collected together from city and country and subjected to a short training of a few months could meet, not to say vanquish, but could meet and hold armies like the armies of the Germans. When this word flashed over the wires, that on the 18th of July the Americans had actually done it, a new hope, a vast hope, took possession of the heart of all England. Although I have been in England many a time and have met Englishmen of all classes, it was never so

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good to be in England as it was last summer. Everywhere you went, there were expressions of appreciation and gratitude for what America had done, until finally one somehow got the self-gratifying hallucination that he personally had contributed to the winning of the victory! Well, America turned the scales! What would have happened without the coming of America into this war I know not, but I don’t like to think what might have happened. We turned the scales, nevertheless. Our Allies had fought three years before we entered the war, and they had fought for a cause which, though we knew it not, was ours as well as theirs. (Applause.) And it was because they had thrown an infinitude of metal and man power along that Western Front, that they were able to hold the contending forces in equilibrium, a somewhat unfavorable equilibrium; yet sufficient to hold them until we arrived, drove them back at Chateau Thierry and then beyond the Ourcq, and then beyond the Aisne,20 and then broke their lines between Verdun and the Argonne Forest and chased them to the very gates of Sedan, where their armies would have been captured and destroyed, thanks to the masterly strategy of Foch,21 had they not anticipated their doom by begging for an armistice and accepting the Allied terms of peace. Now we are engaged in settling the details of peace. No doubt our share in this war and our participation in this Peace Conference will put new obligations upon America. We have entered into a partnership with European nations for the preservation of certain 16 Grover Cleveland was the twenty-second and twentyfourth president of the United States, serving first from 1885–1889, and again from 1893–1897. He was one of two Democrats to win election as president in the years since the Civil War, the other being Woodrow Wilson, president at the time of The Holland Society’s 1919 meeting. 17 William McKinley served as president from 1897 until his assassination in September 1901. He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt. 18 Theodore Roosevelt rose to the presidency upon the death of President William McKinley on September 14, 1901. Roosevelt retained the office with his election in 1904, serving through March 1909. 19 Georg Friedrich Karl, Graff von Hertling, chancellor of the German Empire from 1917 to 1918. He was the first party politician to hold the office. Hertling died on January 4, 1919, twelve days earlier. 20 The Battle of Château-Thierry was fought on May 31, 1918, in north-central France with American forces commanded by General John Pershing. The Battle of the Ourcq followed on July 28-August 6. Allies continued pushing German forces north during the Hundred Days Offensive across the Aisne River and the Argonne Forest leading to the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

French General Ferdinand Foch was supreme commander of the Allied forces in World War I.

good things in this world. I am constrained to point out that while these new obligations devolve upon us, the partnership is, and I hope will remain, a limited partnership. We aren’t ready to recognize that other nations have equal rights with the United States in the affairs of the new world. (Applause.) We aren’t ready to abandon the Monroe Doctrine. (Applause.) We aren’t willing to fight about the settlement of some dynastic, trade or boundary question in Montenegro or Lithuania. There are certain things for which we will fight, and there are a multitude of things happening in the old world which we say properly concern the old world but are no affair of ours. What have we fought for in this war? I judge the future by the present and the past. I say to myself that what we have been fighting for in this war will appeal to us again as it appealed to us in 1917. We are fighting, gentlemen, for our national rights and interests; we are fighting to vindicate the sanctity of treaties and international law; we are fighting for oppressed and little nationalities; we are fighting to make the world safe for democracy—in the great phrase of the President. Those things we have fought for; those things we and our children and children’s children will be ready to fight for again. But beyond those limits, we haven’t now committed ourselves to any scheme of alliance with the nations of the world, and in my opinion beyond those limits we should not commit ourselves in the future. (Applause.) These are spiritual and moral ends for which we are fighting. They pre-suppose a certain attitude of mind and sentiment. Where that attitude exists, it will be easy to establish co-operation; community of feeling being there, cooperation in action easily becomes possible. Any man accustomed to look below the surface of events could have seen that before this European war began there was already such community of sentiment and feeling between the United States and Great Britain, and consequently the Society of Nations was already in existence between the United States and Great Britain. The Bible says, “The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not with observation.” That is to say, often the kingdom of heaven is near and men discern it not. The beginning of a Society of Nations was already here when, after our Spanish War, Great Britain and the United States were drawn together by a community of feeling and sentiment, which made it

possible for them in the future to settle all disputes without recourse to the sword. (Applause.) We were already aware that such community of feeling existed between us and France—France, our ever constant friend!— France, the one friend with whom we have never broken since Dutchmen came to this Island! (Applause.) And the experience of the last four years has shown, with its conferences, and during the last eighteen months with its co-operation, that we are united by these spiritual ties not only to France but also to Italy. So that the Society of Nations is already in existence, because the moral and spiritual bases are in existence for a union between these three nations. What more do you need? Let them go on in the future as we have been doing for the last eighteen months, consulting with one another, throwing their minds into the common pot, adjusting all their difficulties by compromise, by conciliation, agreeing to submit their differences to the arbitrament, not of the sword, but of reason and conscience. Let them go on as they have been doing, and you already have an organ for discharging the functions which you desire to devolve upon that entity which you are calling the League of Nations. It is already here in embryo. It may need some further development, some new organs, some more specific covenants to refer matters in dispute to consultation or conciliation or arbitration, but, essentially, it is already here. Would I then limit the Society of Nations to the United States and England and France and Italy? Far from it! I would say to every independent nation, when it is willing to accept the terms and conditions of admission, it should be gladly welcomed to that Society. I would say to the Empire of Japan, our faithful Ally in this war, she, of course, must be admitted; and I would say to our one-time Ally, Russia, and our former enemy, Germany, when they establish governments representative of their peoples, capable of maintaining order and discharging their international obligations, and when they accept the conditions of membership in the League or the Society of Nations and give evidence that their acceptance isn’t merely a verbal assurance, but a fact endorsed by a new national mind and spirit, then I would accept them on equal terms with the others. That is my program for a Society of Nations, which can only, of course, in the order of events, be gradually evolved. But the point I am especially concerned

to emphasize is that, so far as the Allied nations are concerned, we have the essentials of it now in their agreement on the great moral and spiritual ideas which the Society is intended to promote and preserve. Never again, I hope, will the world become such a pandemonium as Belgium and northeastern France have become in our time. I had the honor, in September, of being invited by Marshal Foch to meet him. We had a very interesting conversation in which, among other things, I spoke of the marvelous anomaly of a nation which had made such astounding progress as Germany had made in trade and industry, science and invention, reverting in its moral conduct toward other nations to the morals of savagery. Marshal Foch listened, and when I had finished, he said, “That isn’t the worst of it; that isn’t the worst of it! With savages, it is the individual who exhibits the savagery, but with the Boche,22 it is savagery organized on a national scale, having behind it as its dynamo all the forces of civilization and of science, including physics, chemistry and mechanics.” (Applause.) And he added what I shouldn’t have reported before the armistice, but what I can without impropriety repeat now, “It is impossible to negotiate peace with such barbarians; there is nothing to do but to chase them beyond the Rhine.” (Applause.) In two months he had done it, and destroyed their power to a degree far more overwhelming than anybody, however sanguine his hopes, would in September have ventured to imagine. What we need, then, is the substitute for organized savagery of organized reason and conscience. May we not look forward to a time: “When the common sense of most shall keep a fretful race in awe, “And the kindly earth shall flourish, wrapped in universal law.”23 (Applause.) Let us have done with the law of the jungle! Let us pray for the reign of justice and the Golden Rule. (Applause.) 22 “The Boche” was a pejorative name for German soldiers during World War I. 23 From Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1835 poem “Locksley Hall.”

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies Dutch Consulate General Hosts Shared Cultural Heritage Days

HE CONSULATE GENERAL of the Kingdom of the Netherlands hosted two Shared Cultural Heritage Days on October 3–4, 2019. The goal of Shared Cultural Heritage Days is to connect heritage professionals in the United States and the Netherlands, furthering knowledge, exchange, and international collaboration. The October 3rd program focused on “Telling a Fuller Story: Multi perspectives of Dutch-American Heritage.” More than fifty educators, curators, researches, archivists, programmers, historic house directors from New York State and New Jersey as well as representatives of the National Archives of the Netherlands and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands attended multiple lectures and panels. The morning program consisted of presentations by major projects supported by Dutch Culture USA. Sophie van Doornmalen gave an update on the Shared Cultural Heritage Program. Mia Nagawiecki of the New-York Historical Society presented the society’s “Women and the American Story Online Curriculum,” which sheds light on women’s history within American history through free online resource material. Maeve Montalvo of the Museum of the City of New York spoke about professional learning development in “Native New York: American Indians and Dutch New Amsterdam,” which teaches educators how to address history properly and break existing myths. Mark Schaming, New York State deputy commissioner of cultural education and director of the New York State Museum, revealed the designs for the New Netherland Galleries, the first permanent exhibition on New Netherland in the world. The afternoon session commenced with a lecture on “Researching and Interpreting the Lives of the Enslaved During the Colonial Period” by Cordell Reaves and Travis Bowman of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. Mr. Reaves focused on using

Johan Van Langen, program manager of Shared Cultural Heritage at the National Archives of the Netherlands, spoke about the Dutch-American history in the National Archives of the Netherlands. an interpretive approach to examine and discuss the lives of the enslaved; Mr. Bowman discussed the importance of archival documents and historic objects. Russell Shorto and Dennis Maika of the New Netherland Institute revealed their preliminary ideas on establishing an outpost of the New Netherland Institute in New York City. Cordell Reaves, Michael Lord, Lavada Nahon, and Neil Clarke discussed how the celebration of Pinkster came about and transformed over time into a mostly African celebration. Yolanda Ezendam spoke about the fuller story of Dutch colonial heritage in the Netherlands, and Johan van Langen spoke about the Dutch-American history in the National Archives of the Netherlands. The program ended with a panel on international visitors’ programs in the Netherlands, during which Yolanda Ezendam, Amanda Mansie, Ian Stewart, and Kamau Ware spoke about their experiences with these programs in the Netherlands. On October 4th, the Consulate hosted a roundtable on Dutch-American archives. Several New York State archival institutions and the National Archives of the

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Netherlands gathered to discuss the future of the seventeenth-century Dutch-American archives. The participants discussed the next steps in preserving, describing, and making New Netherland archives more accessible and telling a more complete historical narrative by including the marginalized voices.

New Netherland Institute’s 42nd Annual Conference

HE NEW NETHERLAND Institute (NNI) held its 42nd Annual Conference, hosted by the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 5, 2019, on “New Directions on the ‘Early Dutch.’ ” Six scholars demonstrated the breadth of today’s research on New Netherland and its legacy. Ian Stewart of New Netherland Timber Framing looked beyond form and style to present Netherlandish architecture as material culture and reveal the intricacies of the lives lived within those buildings; Julie van

den Hout of San Francisco State University presented her digital project on voyages of New Netherland that mines primary source documents to collect data on ship voyages between the Dutch Republic and New Netherland (1609–1664); Chelsea Teale of Humboldt State University explored in a paper “Dutch Colonial Agriculture the value, use, and management of wetlands in New Netherland” and placed them in a key position in the region’s cultural landscape; Shaun Sayres of Clark University rectified the lack of scholarly attention paid to the Susquehannocks in the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth century and demonstrated their key imperial role alongside the Dutch, English, and Swedes; Jaap Jacobs of the University of St Andrews detailed the diplomatic, political, and hierarchical context of Dutch and English land claims in North America in the seventeenth century; and Michael Douma of Georgetown University presented his analysis of hundreds of runaway slave advertisements from 1730–1820 in which the runaway speaks Dutch or with a Dutch accent. Following the conference, a cocktail hour preceded the New Netherland Institute’s annual dinner at Coppola’s in Hyde Park. After dinner, Dr. Joyce D. Goodfriend, winner of the 2019 Hendricks Award for her book Who Should Rule at Home? Confronting the British Elite in New York City, was recognized for “a stimulating, deeply imaginative, revisionist history that will become the standard work for understanding society and culture in eighteenth-century New York City for years to come.” She was followed by a lively keynote address by historical and marine painting artist Len Tantillo. Mr. Tantillo related how he became involved in recreating in paint the fascinating world of New Netherland.

Above: Chelsea Teale explains New Netherland wetlands management. Right: New Netherland Institute Annual Dinner keynote speaker Len Tantillo. national identity as represented in maritime artwork of this period. Dutch artists arguably invented seascape painting and were the first to specialize in this genre. Their influence reverberates in all that followed, from the work of J. M. W. Turner to Winslow Homer to New Bedford artists William Bradford and Albert Pinkham Ryder. The exhibition includes up to fifty paintings, prints, and other related artifacts drawn from the museum’s Dutch collections, one of the largest and most important of this genre outside of the Netherlands. There will also be a complementary exhibition in the fall of 2019 of European and American prints, paintings, and charts related to wind and climate themes.

“De Wind is Op! Climate, Culture and Innovation Dutch Maritime Painting,” runs through May 15, 2020, at the Wattles Family Gallery, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, Massachusetts. For further information see https://www.whalingmuseum.org/explore/ exhibitions/de-wind-is-op/.

New Bedford Whaling Museum Exhibits Dutch Paintings

N EXHIBITION at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, “De Wind is Op! Climate, Culture and Innovation Dutch Maritime Painting,” explores the Whaling Museum’s collection of Golden Age Dutch and Flemish paintings through a fresh lens. These works, currently on public exhibition, interpret the themes of wind, climate, and sea as the drivers behind a uniquely Dutch

The PDP Monogrammist, “Ships and Whales in a Tempest.” Oil on wooden panel, c. 1595.

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Society Activities The Niagara Branch Meeting

HE NIAGARA BRANCH of The Holland Society of New York had its annual dinner meeting on Thursday September 26, 2019 at the Saturn Club in Buffalo, New York. After the customary three introductory toasts, special guest Holland Society President Andrew Terhune provided insightful updates relating to the Society’s current activities as well as an engaging conversation with fellow attendees throughout the evening. In addition to President Terhune, the other speaker was Thomas Bijvoet, publisher of the Dutch the Magazine, a bimonthly Canadian magazine about the Netherlands and its people. Mr. Bijvoet is also the publishing editor of Maandblad de Krant (Monthly Magazine), a publication printed for Dutch immigrants in Canada and the United States. Mr. Bijvoet presented an engaging discussion titled “In the footsteps of Dutch descendant Martin Van Buren and his role in the development of the American political system as the eighth president of the United States.” A lively question-andanswer session followed the talk. Attending Members, Friends and guests were: David and Molly Quackenbush, Glenn and Scott Van Buskirk, Ted, TJ, Larry and Vandy Van Deusen, Petra Bijvoet, Thomas Schofield, Connie and Walter Constantine, John Montague, Joe and Grace Constantini, Susan Hakala, Tom and Rose Bailey, Kevin and Michelle Murrett, Jad and Shelly Cordes, Bill Buscaglia, Michael Keller, Robert and Lynn Butcher, and Kenneth and Linda Kahn. Both Andrew Terhune and Tom Bijvoet were presented with fine crystal glasses custom etched with The Holland Society logo, made by Abino Mills (www.abinomills.com/glassworks@abinomills.com).

Virginia/Carolinas Branch Meeting

N THE WEEKEND of September 20 through September 22, the Virginia/ Carolinas Branch of The Holland Society

Above: Members and guests of the Niagara Branch assembled at the Saturn Club in Buffalo, New York. Right: Thomas Bijvoet addressing the members of the Niagara Branch.

of New York held its annual meeting in Belmont, North Carolina. Twenty-one members and guests gathered in this small North Carolina town to celebrate their New Netherland heritage, make new friends, and have a good time. The weekend began with a barbecue dinner with all the fixings coupled with wine, beer, cheeses and bottles of champagne supplied by Henry Staats from the Atlanta branch. We also had a special guest on Friday evening, Holland Society member Tweed Roosevelt, and great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave us insights on how Roosevelt ran the presidency. On Saturday, the group gathered in the morning to visit the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. The group, accompanied by a personal guide, viewed its special exhibit of overlarge glass-sculptured flowers blended into the natural surroundings of the plants of

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the Carolinas. It was an exceptionally beautiful exhibition. In the afternoon, attendees ventured up to the National Whitewater Center where athletes train for the Olympic Games on man-made rapids. The group was happy to only watch as the rapids run too fast and rough for them. A good dinner at the Old Stone Steakhouse and then a short business meeting on Sunday ended the weekend. The branch parted, planning on next year’s get together and looking forward to learning more about their common heritage and friendships.

New Amsterdam History Center Lecture

HE HOLLAND SOCIETY of New York cosponsored with the New Amsterdam History Center a presentation on

Thursday, October 3, 2019, by Dr. Jaap Jacobs of the University of St. Andrews. Dr. Jacobs’ lecture, “The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam,” hosted by the Netherland Club of New York in the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan, drew a standing-room-only audience. In his presentation, Dr. Jacobs explored the fierce struggle between lawyer Adriaen van der Donck and Dutch West India Company Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant in New Netherland. But the origins of their enmity lay in the Netherlands. Instead of a clash between opposing ideologies of humanist learning and Calvinist orthodoxy, this was a struggle for political hegemony. Jacobs explained the conflict between Van der Donck and Stuyvesant by highlighting its background of political struggles in the Netherlands and thus provided a new perspective on the motives of the two protagonists in New Netherland in light of

New Amsterdam History Center lecturer Dr. Jaap Jacobs gave an engrossing presentation before a large audience at the Netherland Club cosponsored by the Holland Society of New York. his research into Petrus Suyvesant. A lively question-and-answer session followed the lecture. Dr. Jacob’s paper has been published as “ ‘Act with the Cunning of a Fox’: The Political Dimensions of the Struggle for

Hegemony over New Netherland, 1647– 1653” in the Journal of Early American History 8 (2018), no. 2: 122–152, for which Jacobs received the 2019 Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize, awarded by the New Netherland Institute.

In Memoriam Cyrus William Schoonmaker The Holland Society recently learned of the passing of Holland Society of New York member Cyrus William Schoonmaker on January 23, 2017, at his home in Glendo, Wyoming, at the age of eighty-seven. Mr. Schoonmaker was born on June 18, 1929, in Maywood, New Jersey, the only child of Albert V. Schoonmaker and Myrtle Groth. He claimed descent from Hendrick Jochemsz Schoonmaker, who emigrated to New Netherland from Hamburg, Germany, in 1654. Mr. Schoonmaker joined The Holland Society in 2000. Mr. Schoonmaker attended primary schools in New Jersey before his family relocated to upstate New York, where her completed high school. Upon graduation from Davenport, New York, High School in 1946, Cyrus joined the United States Army, from which he received an honorable discharge three years later. While in the service, Mr. Schoonmaker met Sally Anne Chesniak, who was working in the Baltimore shipyards. They married on August 9, 1949, in Baltimore, Maryland. They subsequenlty moved to Delhi, New York, where they raised four children:

adopted son Robert Schoonmaker, born on September 22, 1944, in Wilmington, Maryland; Albert V. Schoonmaker, born on June 22, 1950; Susan Schoonmaker, born on November 14, 1951; and Cyrus William Schoonmaker II, born on December 4, 1952, all in Delhi. His wife of forty-four years, Sally, predeceased her husband on September 13, 1993, and sons Albert predeceased him on January 23, 2001, and Robert on September 10, 2013. Mr. Schoonmaker enjoyed the outdoors, animals, and living off of the land. After spending his first sixteen years in the metropolitan New York area, the western Catskill Mountain Region of New York was paradise for him. He soon bought a dairy farm in Delaware County and became a successful registered Holstein milk producer. Mr. Schoonmaker was a partner in Stone Wall Realty, Middleton, New York, as a licensed real estate broker, which kept him busy on weekends. Mr. Schoonmaker also had a fondness for politics and was elected Meredith Township Justice of the Peace in his first election. Soon after he became Republican commissioner for the Delaware County Board of Elections. With politics occupying much of his time, he moved away from day-to-day farming operations and dedicated himself to

government service. He was elected Delaware County treasurer, where he worked for the next twelve years, was Republican Party chairman, and launched an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate. Along the way, Mr.Schoonmaker was active in the New York State Republican Party, where he met many of his cronies, including Jack Kemp, Hamilton Fish IV, and others. He also was a state delegate to four Republican National Conventions, of which he was always very proud. Later in his working years, he went to Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist, representing the seven bankrupt railroads of the Northeast. During this time he met many inside-the-beltway folks, including Vice President George H. W. Bush, as well as many other United States senators and congressmen. After qualifying for his New York state pension, Mr. Schoonmaker moved to Iowa, where his youngest son, Cyrus W. Schoonmaker II, resided. They bought a farm together in Madison County, Iowa. Mr. Schoonmaker lived on the farm for five years, back with his real love of land and animals. He raised corn, soybeans, and Black Angus beef cattle. While in Iowa, Cyrus made multiple trips to Wyoming, where he really enjoyed the open spaces. He decided to relocate in eastern Wyoming,

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starting yet another career, utilizing his financial skills as the first fee manager of a state park in the State of Wyoming. Soon after, he was given the task of starting the initial fee structure for the entire Wyoming State Park System. Traveling the state, he trained new park fee managers and created new financial opportunities for Wyoming. During these years Cyrus lived on large western ranches, he always had his best friend, a Samoyed dog at his side. Following his final retirement, Cyrus wintered on Jekyll Island, Georgia, spending time with his lifelong friends from the East Coast. He always looked forward to getting back to the West to get his garden started for the season. Mr. Schoonmaker was survived by his daughter Susan Sanders of Prescott, Arizona, son, Cyrus William Schoonmaker II of Adel, Iowa, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. There were no services.

Cyrus William Schoonmaker II

Cyrus “Cy” Schoonmaker II passed away on July 20, 2019, in Adel, Iowa, at the age of sixty-six. Mr. Schoonmaker was born on December 4, 1952, on a dairy farm in Delhi, New York, son of Cyrus William Schoonmaker (obituary above) and Sally Shesniak. He claimed descent from Hendrick Jochemsz Schoonmaker, who emigrated to New Netherland from Hamburg, Germany, in 1654. Mr. Schoonmaker joined The Holland Society in 2005. Mr. Schoonmaker attended country schools and graduated in 1971 from Delaware Academy, where he played football, baseball, basketball, and ran track. During his childhood, he met many of his father’s political connections from New York and Washington, D.C. He attended Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, at which he was a member and president of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. In 1981, Mr. Schoonmaker moved to Iowa, where he began his lifelong career as a food broker. He recently celebrated thirty-five years with Advantage Solutions. Mr. Schoonmaker met his future wife, Ann Clare Lind, in 1982; they married on June 22, 1985. The couple had twins Clare Ann Schoonmaker and Cyrus William Schoonmaker on April 21, 1995, in Des Moines, Iowa. Mr. Schoonmaker and his wife were avid

travelers and made many friends across the world. He shared his love of sports with his children and friends, and attended multiple World Series games, Masters, and Final Four tournaments where he met countless athletes, coaches, and commentators. He will be remembered for never missing his children’s life events, big or small, and his love of bringing people together over delicious home-cooked meals. His personality and sense of humor could light up any room. Mr. Schoonmaker is survived by his wife of thirty-four years, Ann, children, Clare Ann Wing of Marshalltown, Iowa, and Cyrus William Schoonmaker of Adel, Iowa, also a member of The Holland Society. A memorial service was held at the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas Center, Iowa on Friday, July 26, 2019.

Everett Hamilton Van Hoesen Everett Hamilton Van Hoesen, best known as “Van,” died on September 3, 2019, at Avow Hospice of Naples, Florida, due to complications of leukemia, which he had successfully fought for nearly three years. Mr. Van Hoesen was born in Fanwood, New Jersey, on February 26, 1933, son of Walter Hamilton Van Hoesen and Naomi Fritts. He claimed descent from Jan Franz van Housom, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1639 from Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, a duchy governed at the time by a Danish prince. A ferryboat operator, on March 29, 1639, he signed a contract with patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer to settle at Rensselaerswijck, New Netherland. Mr. Van Hoesen’s father, Walter Hamilton Van Hoesen, served as editor of the de Halve Maen from 1943 through 1958 and was president of The Holland Society from 1958 to 1960. Mr. Van Hoesen joined The Holland Society in 1999. Mr. Van Hoesen graduated from Scotch Plains/Fanwood High School, Fanwood, New Jersey. He received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1955, and executive degrees from Columbia University Management Program in Manhattan in 1971 and Harvard Business School in 1976. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1955 to 1963 with the rank of lieutenant with the 87th Construction Engineer Battalion of the United States Army and other Reserve units. At Lehigh he was a

Fall 2019

Distinguished Military Graduate, attained membership in the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi, and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus. He had an abiding interest in advanced education and served prominently on advisory committees at Lehigh, Columbia University, and Princeton University. Mr. Van Hoesen began a thirty-year career with IBM in 1955 in manufacturing. He went on to become president of the Information Records Division and subsequently other divisions. He retired as president of the Industrial Systems Group. His many achievements included overseeing production of more than one million Selectric typewriters in 1974. In 1976 he launched the first blood cell separator used at MD Anderson to enable the use of chemo “cocktails.” Consequently, major strides were made in curing cancer, including the first bone marrow transplants. The equipment also made possible single-donor donations of blood platelets and other components, an advancement that ironically extended his own life for many months. At his direction, his biomedical team also provided the first portable computerized EKG diagnostic computer. Other innovations that he helped to guide were the introduction of IBM’s first robotics machines, direct and wholesale products distribution, the introduction of IBM products retail stores, and guiding his engineering team as they designed and built the first prototypes of a personal computer at IBM. Mr. Van Hoesen married Alice Louise Lull in Fanwood, New Jersey, on September 11, 1954. The couple had five children: Richard Hamilton Van Hoesen, born on June 8, 1955, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Mark Lyman Van Hoesen, born on August 9, 1956, in Binghampton, New York; Karen Louise Van Hoesen, born on August 25, 1959, in Plainfield, New Jersey; Kimberly Elizabeth Van Hoesen, born on December 17, 1960; and David Walter Van Hoesen, born on September 25, 1963. Throughout his life, Mr. Van Hoesen played basketball, baseball, squash, tennis, and golf, as well as water and snow skied. He was a member of the Burning Tree Country Club of Greenwich, Connecticut, serving as its president, Island Country Club of Marco Island, Florida, and the Nassau Club of Princeton, New Jersey. In order to keep up with his wife, an experienced bridge player, he began duplicate bridge lessons and became an ACBL Life Master in 2018. He also learned to fly, first

soloing in 1973. Following his retirement, the couple alternated between homes on Marco Island, Florida, and Greenwich, Connecticut. Mr. Van Hoesen held an abiding interest in genealogy and history. In 1662, his ancestor Jan Franz van Hoesen had purchased land along the Hudson River at Claverack from the Indians, which became the future site of the City of Hudson, New York. Lutheran by profession, the family was among those who formed the first Lutheran Church of America across the Hudson River in Loonenberg, present-day Athens, New York. In addition to his membership in The Holland Society Mr. Van Hoesen was a member of the New Netherland Society, the Mayflower Society, and the Sons of the American Revolution Mr. Van Hoesen is survived by his five children: Richard Van Hoesen of Los Gatos, California, Mark Van Hoesen of Jupiter, Florida, Karen Van Hoesen-Milroy, who is an RVer, Kimberly Hinkle of John’s Creek, Georgia, and David Van Hoesen of Greenwich, Connecticut; sixteen grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren. Memorial services were private.

Robert Guestier Goelet Holland Society of New York member and trustee emeritus Robert Guestier Goelet died at home in Manhattan on October 9, 2019. Mr. Goelet was born on September 28, 1923, at Sandricourt, Oise, France, son of Robert Walton Goelet and Anne Marie Guestier. Mr. Goelet claimed descent from Francis Goelet, who arrived in New York City from Amsterdam, Netherlands. His grandfather Robert Goelet was elected to membership in The Holland Society on April 6, 1886, prior to the change of ancestry qualifications from 1776 to 1675. Mr. Goelet was elected to membership in The Holland Society in June 1956. He served as a trustee of the Society from 1994 to 2009. Mr. Goelet, whose mother’s family were wine merchants Barton & Guestier and owned a 10,000-acre chateau, spent his childhood in France until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Manhattan. He thereafter attended the Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts,

before graduating from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1945. During World War II, Mr. Goelet trained as a Helldiver bomber pilot with the United States Navy. He later served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Mr. Goelet served as president of the family real-estate firms, Goelet Realty Company and the Rhode Island Corporation, both based in Manhattan. In 1952, he was elected a director of the Chemical Bank (today known as JPMorgan Chase & Co.) which was founded by an ancestor, Peter Goelet, in 1824. In 1957, he became a director of Air America, the Central Intelligence Agency-financed private air charter company. He also served as a member of the New York City Council. Mr. Goelet was most noted for his philanthropic activities. He had a lifelong affection for ornithology and an interest in insects. He became a board member of the New York Zoological Society in 1951 (today known as the Wildlife Conservation Society), and served as its president in 1971–1975. He played a significant role in revitalizing the society, broadening its Latin American conservation efforts, funding the establishment of a librarian for its archives, and under his leadership, the opening of the Bronx Zoo’s World of Birds. He became a Life Trustee in 1998. In late 1975, Mr. Goelet was named president of the American Museum of Natural History, and was known as a “man ‘nuts for fossils.’ ” He served as the museum’s chairman until his retirement in 1989. He assembled an extraordinary collection of bees, which he donated to the American Museum of Natural History, and helped create a reserve to protect one of the world’s largest penguin colonies in Argentina’s Patagonia. In gratitude for his support, in 1997 a genus of bee found in Peru was named after him, Goeletapis. In addition, Mr. Goelet served as a trustee of the New-York Historical Society after 1961, as the society’s vice president in 1965–1971, and as its president from 1971 to 1987, during which period he guided the Historical Society through a period of immense challenges. Mr. Goelet was a generous benefactor to The Holland Society of New York in both time and funds. He took special interest in the Society’s historic publications, the

Society’s journal de Halve Maen, and the Society’s library. Due to his support, the Society was able to maintain a professional librarian for many years. In addition to the Holland Society. Mr. Goelet served on the boards of the National Audubon Society, where he was treasurer; the Carnegie Institution for Science; Boscobel, a historical house on the Hudson; Phipps Houses in New York City; the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts; and the faculty of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. For his contribution to French culture he received the Officier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1982 and Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 1987. As Mr. Goelet’s ancestor Jacob Goelet was closely associated with the family of seventeenth-century New York rebel governor Jacob Leisler, Mr. Goelet was a major benefactor of the Jacob Leisler Project at New York University and in the creation of the Jacob Leisler Institute in Hudson, New York. In addition to The Holland Society, Mr. Goelet was a member of the French Jockey Club, Paris, from 1950 to his death. He also served on the boards of French Institute Alliance Française, the National Audubon Society, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Phipps Houses. Mr. Goelet married Alexandra Gardiner Creel on Gardiner’s Island on September 9, 1976. The couple had two children: Alexandra Gardiner Goelet, born on April 4, 1977, in Manhattan, and Robert Gardiner Goelet born on December 26, 1978, in Manhattan. Following the death of his wife’s uncle Robert David Lion Gardiner in 2004, the Goelets took full possession the 3,300-acre Gardiner’s Island, which has twenty-seven miles of coastline, several colonial buildings, a 200-year-old windmill, and a family cemetery. Upon taking on its stewardship, Mr. and Mrs. Goelet maintained the island as a bird sanctuary, while restoring its colonial buildings and natural habitat. Mr. Goelet is survived by his wife, Alexandra, daughter Alexandra Gardiner Goelet, and son Robert Gardiner Goelet. Burial services were private. Interment was on Gardiner’s Island.

de Halve Maen

The Holland Society of New York requests the pleasure of your company at the 134th Annual Meeting and Dinner on Saturday, April 4, 2020 at the Lotos Club 5 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065

2020 Annual Medalists Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings will receive the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Annual Meeting 4:30 PM Cocktails 6:00 PM Dinner 7:00 PM Presentation 8:30 PM $80 for Members and Fellows $190 for Friends and Guests Dress: Black tie optional

Please respond no later than March 28, 2020; make check payable to: The Holland Society of New York. Please mail your response and payment to 1345 Avenue of the Americas, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105, or visit our website at www.hollandsociety.org and pay via Paypal. This year, the election ballot for the Board of Trustees will be electronic. Please stay tuned for a mailing that provides a link to the election slate. I will attend the Holland Society Annual Meeting Dinner on April 4, 2020. Enclosed is my check for payment. Name:___________________________________________________________________________ Address:_________________________________________________________________________ Tel:_________________________________Email:_______________________________________